The Best Portable Power Pack

There’s the moment when your phone goes below 20 per cent power and you get that foreboding notification — if you don’t plug in soon, you’re going to die. In some situations, even careful planning can’t guarantee a recharge. That’s why there are portable power packs — when the power is out, or your travels take you far from an outlet, these are the gadgets that hold a charge for other gadgets. Do these little juice boxes work?

Testing Methodology

We hooked the chargers to a team of gadget guinea pigs low on juice — an iPhone 4, a Samsung Galaxy S3 and an iPad 1. We recorded the battery life on the computer and timed how long it took to recharge on the power packs. After each recharge, we’d deplete the gadget’s battery again, and match a different gadget with another charger. For these portable power stations to be effective, they have to work quickly, and they can’t crap out before the device is totally gassed up.

The Duracell doesn’t have a long life span. When charging the iPhone 4 at a 45 per cent charge, it lasted for an hour and 10 minutes, boosting the phone to 80 per cent before it cut out. Once the power pack was tapped out and then plugged in, it took a whole three hours to regain its own charge. That’s pretty awful, considering that’s longer than the amont of time it was working. It’s also not compatible with tablets. With a USB port and a mini USB attached, you could technically charge two gadgets at once with this little guy, but you wouldn’t want to.

The sleek, all black Mophie Juicepack powerstation is lightweight and compact — easy to slip in your purse or your pocket. But it’s another case of something that isn’t capable of charging your gadget all the way. If you need a power source while you’re out for the day, it’s a decent option. While it works more swiftly and lasts longer than the Duracell, don’t anticipate getting much oomph out of it.

Plugged into an S3 with 24 per cent battery left, the Juicepack took the phone to 54 per cent, over the course of two hours, then it died. The Mophie needed to charge for an hour before it could be used again, after which it took another hour to bring the phone up to a full tank. (Obviously, this was just for testing — in a real scenario, you’d simply plug in the S3).

The Juicepack doesn’t work for tablets. That said, it charged more quickly than the Duracell, and it didn’t take all that long to be up and running again. If you’re out all day and worried about your battery, this is a good thing to have on hand.

The HyperJuice Plug is the only charger you need. That is if you were on a long camping trip or suffering through an extended power outage The stalwart brick will power up your iPhone and your iPad simultaneously, and filling them both up without running out. Claiming to be capable of charging your phone 12 times before it goes dark, the HyperJuice Plug is fast and enduring. It took a little over an hour for it to zip the iPhone from 29 per cent to full. Meanwhile, it was also nourishing the iPad, which went from 39 per cent to max power in an hour and a half. And it still had more power left in it. Although it’s much heavier than the two chargers it bested, this is the kind of thing you want to remember to pack every time you go on a trip.

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Blah, just got an up / down converter PCB from ebay for $15, tuned it to 5V and hooked it up to a 10 battery bank of 2.9Ah NiMH AA's and a USB socket. Now I have 29Ah of charge for camping for about $50! Blows all these babies out of the water ;-)...

My thoughts exactly. I still have a HyperMac battery pack (HyperJuices' original name before the Apple lawyers got them to change their name); and I have to admit, it's awesome.

Next time Leslie, try comparing similar products - either similar cost / similar capacity or something. This will actually give us a comparison we can relate to.

"In my next test I'm going to compare the acceleration speed of three cars. The test environment is they all start from a standing position. All full of fuel. All see how fast they can accelerate - the results will be determined on how fast they reach 100km/ph and the top speed they can attain in the space of 1000m.

What a useless peice of shite article. I personally have two of the Duracell packs and I love it. I can slip it in my pocket to charge my phone while I go about my business. Try doing that with the hyper juice plug.
The bonus was I got both of them for $15. Gee I wonder what I would prefer for a device to provide me with a little bit of extra juice until I get to a socket.The massive, heavy device that costa small fortune or something I can chuck in my pocket and cost less than my lunch.

I bought one of those Duracell ones for cheap off of Catch Of The Day, and I'm glad I didn't pay much for it. When plugged into my S2 it was barely able to keep the percentage the same when just using the phone for web browsing, I couldn't imagine it would last long if I wanted to use it on an extended flight.

The better option for non iDevice people? Buy a 2nd battery and keep it charged up. My S2 is the HD LTE one from Korea and it came with a 2nd battery and charging dock / stand, which are smaller then the Duracell and means that I get 100% charge, and if needs be I can be recharging the now flat battery off of the Duracell, and if I go through that as well... then the zombies must have happened and the world has come to an end if I've gone 24 hours without a powerpoint...

I use the Nokia DC-16 which uses a MicroUSB to charge so it works with nearly all smartphone chargers and has a USB port on top so it may work with a iphone cable (have not tried but output is 950 mA???). Funny thing is - its smaller than all the ones you tested while still packing a 2200 mAh battery.

I'm sorry but there's something hinkey here... The known capacity of the each unit being tested the alleged residual charge in the devices being charged which also have known capacities, the time elapsed to perform each task and the end results just don't add up or make sense - which would lead me to believe your Methodology was flawed in some way.